


devils in the snow

by spideywhiteys



Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [14]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, Vampire AU, i also love kiba and sasuke's dynamic for some odd reason, i love akamaru, it's sasuke bc who else lol, just an unsuspecting human with a big dog, kiba enters the wrong house, kiba is SHOCKINGLY not a werewolf, lost in a snowstorm, or rather the potential their dynamic has, or the right one? who knows...., sorta magic realism?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28761414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideywhiteys/pseuds/spideywhiteys
Summary: Kiba makes the mistake of going too far into the woods, overconfident in his abilities as one of the best hunters in his village. When a storm hits and he's too far from home, he stumbles upon a manor that may as well be a castle... and it's not as abandoned as it appears.
Relationships: Inuzuka Kiba & Uchiha Sasuke
Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086938
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	devils in the snow

**Author's Note:**

> Day 14: Vampire AU / Kiba + Sasuke

Kiba shuts the massive oaken door behind him. The howls of the snowstorm are silenced and the only sounds in his ears are the clanks of metal hinges and the haggard breaths of himself and his canine companion.

“Jeez, Akamaru, who’s smart idea was it to stay out hunting so late?” He grumbles. Every inch of him is cold, his nose bright red and frozen. The layers he’s wearing feel meaningless now, soaked and crusted with ice and snow. The white crystals fall from his clothes and hair, slush shaken from his boots with furious stomping. 

Akamaru whines in response. It was absolutely Kiba’s fault.

From the dark gloom and rush of falling snow, a building had loomed. The woods were dark and unforgiving. Home to him, usually, though he’s never been this deep in them before. Definitely never seen  _ this  _ place. What he’d needed was shelter, and surely the owners of this place wouldn’t leave a guy like him out in the cold, would they?

Kiba turns around, leaving wet footprints across the cobblestone floors. Akamaru’s nails clack softly as he follows.

“This place is huge!” He gasps, voice echoing. He’s never seen such opulence before, even as the son of his village’s chief. This place is massive, the entry room dark and lavishly decorated — with dust on almost every inch of it. There’s a grand staircase with a moth-eaten carpet, marble railings with twisting vines of gold, candlesticks housing half-used candles with the wax frozen mid-drip. Cobwebs hang from corners, spiders crawling across silvery threads with slow movements. When he exhales, he sees his breath. It’s cold, but at least he’s out of the storm.

Kiba and Akamaru sneeze in unison, their progress across the floor kicking up a coating of dust. 

It’s eerily quiet in here.

They make their way up the steps of the much too large staircase. “Hello? Anyone hooooome?”

His call shatters the stillness, bouncing off the walls. As loud as he is, depending on how big this place is they might not hear him at all. If this place is abandoned, he’ll be fine making himself at home. But if it’s not, well….his mother  _ did _ manage to beat a  _ few _ manners into his thick skull. Entering someone else’s territory is a very delicate process. 

“Doesn’t really look like anyone’s been here in a while.” He comments, running a finger over the railing and grimacing at the dust. He wipes it on his pants. “Kinda weird. You’d think a place like this would have a bunch of maids or somethin’. I hear a lot of rich people have ‘em ‘cause they don’t know how to clean up their own messes. Maybe that’s what happened here.”

Akamaru huffs a bit, slinking along with his head down. As usual, he offers no verbal reply, but Kiba can understand him anyway. 

“Yeah, rich people are pretty stupid, huh.” Kiba hums to himself, ignoring the fact that he barely tidies his own room unless his mother is hovering over his shoulder.

Midway up the steps break off into two paths — left and right. He goes to the left.

They wander down a hall of wide windows, all unbroken but grimy with dust and age. Kiba lives in a hunting village, where everyone is constantly moving and working — he’s never seen a place in such disuse before. The dust is really starting to bug his nose. There’s no way anyone can possibly live here. 

Akamaru whines.

“What is it, buddy?” 

A sniff. Akamaru trots over to a wall. While one side is mostly glass windows, the other is stone, broken up by statues, paintings and doors with fancy handles. Akamaru stops by a curtain, half of it shredded and cut with what looks like something sharp. Kiba brushes it aside to see a painting underneath. 

It’s of a family, all wearing beautiful clothes and beautiful faces. Dark eyes and hair, skin paler than Kiba has ever seen, the colors mostly washed out by age and poor storage. He can see every individual stroke. It’s stunning to look at, mostly in the display of talent and the way new, unfamiliar things are. Kiba’s village isn’t made up of anyone who can paint, and he doesn’t really take much interest in the arts.

Still, it’s amazing how paint can turn into something that looks so real.

Kiba lets the curtain drop, his wet gloves leaving damp spots on the derelict fabric. He keeps moving down the hall. There’s so much space to cover in here, so much to look at. He calls out into the silence and hears no call in return. He and Akamaru are the only ones who breathe in the dust, who track footprints across the floors.

Even if there  _ is _ someone home, at this point Kiba could take his pick of the rooms and live here for months without anyone knowing, he’s sure of it! No matter how loud his mother tells him he is — funny, seeing as he gets it from her — if no one is replying to his loud calls now, then they probably won’t notice later.

“This sucks. It’s cold and I wanna get outta these wet clothes.” Kiba shivers under his soaked layers. “We gotta find a room with a fireplace.”

Akamaru yips in agreement.

There’s another staircase hidden away in a nook at the end of the hall. Other halls branch off, leading to other places on that floor, or opening into larger rooms that Kiba can’t figure out the use for. He peeks into most of them before jogging back to the small staircase. It spirals up, the light fading the higher up he goes. There are no windows here, just the dark and the sounds of Akamaru’s nails and Kiba’s pulse in his ears. 

Up and up, lazy, slow spirals and sheer blackness. Kiba isn’t scared of the dark and he refuses to be scared here, especially with Akamaru at his side. Besides, there’s nothing he can’t handle in the woods, nevermind some giant house.

“Whataya think, Akamaru?” He says, lowering his voice because speaking normally feels so loud — too loud — in such a small space. “This must be a tower. Seems like the kinda place that has towers. Couldn’t get a good look at it on the way up, ‘cause of the snow ‘n all.”

Akamaru makes a few soft noises. 

“Yeah, I know I’m right. It’s definitely a tower.”

The faintest hints of light can be seen further up. Kiba quickens his steps.

“Made it to the top!” He exclaims. 

He expects a room of some kind, with wide windows and maybe a live person with a surprised look on their face. 

What he gets instead is a door. A single door that looks as if it’s carved from metal, patterns and symbols dug into it — kinda like the pretty, super-fancy armor Kiba has seen the occasional passing knight wear. A single door with a crystal inlaid at the top.

_ A glowing crystal. _

“Holy — do you see that, Akamaru?” 

His companion barks. 

“Amazing!” He breathes, reaching up to touch the glowing gem. Kiba has never seen such a thing before. Magic was said to exist a long, long time ago — centuries, really — but very few remnants could be found today. It used to be a world where animals talked and humans hummed spells to make plants grow or to heal or fight — Kiba thinks it’d be pretty cool if Akamaru could actually talk back. 

Kiba drops his fingers from the glowing stone and curls them around the stupidly ornate door handle. “Bet someone  _ has _ to be in here.”

It opens with a turn and a shove, the air itself groaning and gasping like a living being. A rush of wind blows by him, ruffling his hair and Akamaru’s fur.

_ Weird, _ he thinks.

Akamaru whines, his nails tapping across the floor as he shifts his feet.

“What?” Kiba asks, brow furrowing, “What’s gotten into you?”

Inside is a single room. A bedroom — at least, Kiba thinks that’s what it is. Wide windows show the storm outside, floating crystals illuminating the space and casting shadows across the floor. In the middle of the room is a bed, huge and made of sheer black wood. Gauzy curtains hang around it. There’s very little else in the room. A dresser made of the same wood, a nightstand on either side of the bed. An old chair by a fireplace. A bookcase beside it. The carpets spread across the floor contain more detail than the rest of the room.

Akamaru shifts anxiously once more. He makes a whimpering sound and doesn’t follow Kiba into the room.

“Seriously, what’s up?” He asks, hands on his hips. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

He wanders further into the room as if to prove it. His boots thump against the carpeted stone as he gets closer to the bed. Light bounces off the thin curtains, shimmering like a sheet of captured stars. Under the covers is a figure.

Kiba blinks.

The figure is still there.

“Gah!” He yelps belatedly, shuffling back with his arms out. “Whoa! Uh —”

Nothing.

He creeps closer. By the door, Akamaru whines again.

The man in the bed looks almost Kiba’s age, and vaguely like one of the people in the worn painting downstairs. Ethereal. Skin as a white as the moon, night-dark hair that bleeds blue tones in the crystal light. He’s probably the most beautiful man Kiba has ever seen. It’s kind of annoying.

“Hey, uh, excuse me?” He says, hand reaching to shake the man, “Uh, sorry to break in, but I’ve been yelling for like an hour and no one was answering and it’s really cold outside—”

He makes contact with the man’s shoulder and through his gloves he can already tell that the man feels as cold as ice, as cold as the winter storm Kiba has just fled from. It makes him retract his hand instinctively, sudden dread curling in his gut.

Akamaru whimpers and yips.

A pale hand snatches Kiba’s wrist before he can pull away fully, and crimson eyes blink up from a bed of dark lashes. Perfect lips part, revealing a flash of teeth too sharp for a human mouth.

Kiba flinches at the frigid, unrelenting grip. “Hey!”

A grimace. A narrowing of blood red eyes. The fingers on Kiba’s wrist tighten, pressing against his pulse.

In a hauntingly soft voice, just as beautiful as the body it comes from, the man says: “...it smells like wet dog in here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow / Support me on [Tumblr](https://spideyfoof.tumblr.com/) and let me know if you'd like to see more of this AU!


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